I met Jason when he linked to one of my posts on career months ago. In our conversations, I learned that it was the difficulties of a job search he experienced first hand when he was downsized in 2006 that led to the creation of JibberJobber.com. Given his extensive software and IT experience, he was able to build a tool that was more suitable to managing not just a job search, but a whole career.

I recently sat down with Jason to have a conversation around the future of work.

In many of your posts and talks, you draw a difference between career and job. Certainly things have changed in the last 5-10 years and we are drawing more security from our core skill sets and abilities than we are from any one employer - or we should. Do you still see a pervasive need to continue making that distinction between work and job?

Jason: Absolutely … I thought that the entire world was making this distinction as “job security” means less than it ever has, and I saw the message all over blogs and articles. It seems, however, that for every person who reads the blog, there are 999 people who don’t read, or think, about it. I don’t see anything in the future that would decrease the need for us to be career oriented, thinking about CEO of Me, Inc., and hope to see more people take this seriously.

There's also another curious thought I have about the future of work. More and more, I find that we are defined (we learn, grow, become more experienced) by project instead of by design. Do you find that to be true? Is a career now, in fact, a succession of meaningful and game changing projects?

Jason: A career should be defined as such a succession, because a project might be what you and I think, or what a professional does for 18 months at one company (instead of many projects, wrap it up as “helped XYZ company achieve …”). I read somewhere that the tenure of a CXO could be as short as 12 – 18 months… imagine changing jobs (unwillingly) every year! How do you define what you did? It was, in essence, a project. And you are collecting a string of this type of project work.

I hear this from many companies that are hiring today. Although there does not seem to be scarcity in the number of resume submissions, there is rarely a match for what they are seeking among them. Part of the question may be one of format - I've seen some great candidates show up with very poor resumes, and vice versa. The other part may be the fact that the hiring process is old and tired - we need to reinvent a new one. What is your take?

Jason: I’m disgusted in the hiring process. You may be the perfect “candidate,” but if you are missing on criteria they will discount you early on. I think it’s a shame that the hiring process is trying to be automated and efficient, and it is so problem-ridden. I’ve even heard of situations where HR has deleted all of the resumes they have on file just to clean it up and start over, not because they were junk, but because the HR person was overwhelmed and needed a fresh start.

These are not paper submissions, these are human beings, with families, bills, and talents. I have no idea how to really get beyond the issues, but I’ll say that this entire process is broken, not just with HR, but with job seekers, and recruiters, and interviewers, and hiring managers, and … yep, it’s all broken. That’s why we’ve seen all of these “solutions” pop up over the last year or two.

On the candidate side, I hear it continues to be difficult to run an organized job search campaign, if we should still call a job search a campaign.

Jason: It should be actually, if you are doing the job search right, this should be very hard to organize. Think about it – if it takes one month for every $10,000 in salary, you might be in a job search for over seven months, right? In those seven months you will have hundreds, maybe thousands of new network contacts.

How do you nurture those relationships, and know where you need to focus your efforts? Then, pile on all of the target companies, places you submit your resume, jobs you apply for… and the phone numbers, action items, dates, etc…. this is a lot of information that you should manage and track. And think of how valuable all of this information will be in your next job search!?

I know you created a tool to stay productive and on top of all activities. Is it easy to use instead on a spreadsheet? What are the benefits of using that system vs. an home grown one? Sell me!

Jason: When I was in my job search I used a spreadsheet to manage all of that information, and ensure that I did all the follow-up stuff you do in a job search or networking situation. Within about a month my spreadsheet had hundreds of line-items, and it was getting out of hand (especially as I started networking more).

I realized that a salesperson would never be able to run a successful campaign on a spreadsheet, and that is why there are products like Salesforce.com, ACT! and Goldmine… what if I could marry the job search process with one of those CRM tools? We built a website to do just that, which is JibberJobber.com. The free version of JibberJobber, which is available to you for life, is more functional and powerful than an Excel spreadsheet would be for most people. There is no sales jargon… it is a relationship management tool designed to help you manage your career.

If you want to upgrade you get a number of bells-and-whistles which aren’t necessary to do a job search campaign, but definitely help as you network and proactively manage your career relationships. You can, of course, go the “home-made” route, which I did, but when it gets frustrating, or you spend more time on design than on doing the job search, you’ll want something that is sophisticated, a long-term solution, and designed for you. That’s JibberJobber.com.

There's a lot of talk about specialization - being really good at something. Yet, when I see job openings, the descriptions are very general. Is there a disconnect, you think, between what we consider the jobs of the future and what companies still need?

Jason: Yes, I definitely think there is a disconnect. I think this is one of the “broken” things about the job search process. Job descriptions are biased with company culture and jargon, which might be meaningless to outsiders… how do you apply to a culture that you don’t know or understand?

In fact, I’m guessing that most hiring managers are not thinking about the line-items in a job description when they are hiring as much as “can this person do the most important job,” which might not be on the job description! It becomes the job seeker’s job to figure out what the hiring manager’s hot spots are (while still addressing the job description, especially if HR is involved in the hiring process).

One need just take a look at how social media is creating new opportunities for writers and publishers. Now we're hearing about community managers and even chief bloggers. Do you think those titles will take hold and stick?

Jason: I hope so… I am really impressed with companies that are doing this right, and really engaging a community in real conversation. It’s very consumer-oriented… I’m not sure too many companies are really ready for something like this. Kudos to those who are there, and moving forward!

After all, many of the white collar jobs we have today did not exist even a decade or two ago. Is change more rapid now? What would you suggest for individuals entering the work force today?

Jason: You have to think about this “flat world” thing, and how you are going to stay competitive over the course of your career. Think about your network, and the depth of the relationships, as this is going to be just as critical as knowledge or skills.

Become the CEO of Me, Inc, and do stuff a CEO would do: contingency plan, get a board of directors, strategize, grow and develop, prepare, etc. I think about how my career is different than what my son (who is now 7) will be faced with, and it’s a totally different world that we’re preparing him for.

What about mentors? Is it still important to have mentors to be successful? Do you have a mentor?

Jason: I have people who mentor me, but no official mentor or coach right now. It’s rather fluid – depending on what I need, I tap into my network to find someone who has already paved the way and can help me through an issue. Mentors are critical, and that’s one reason to grow and nurture your network.

Where do you draw inspiration?

Jason: From various sources. I have a vision of what JibberJobber could be, and what that would mean for me and my family. I am very driven by my users, who I know are career-oriented and passionate about preparing for their futures.

I get inspiration from companies I read about at TechCrunch, learning about what other entrepreneurs are doing, their successes and failures. I have about 30 career experts who have partnered with me and they are very inspirational and encouraging.

And, none of this would be possible if it weren’t for the support of my wife, kids and family. I’d stubbornly move forward, but they are so supportive and it’s great to not have to worry about them not having a vision that permits me to do what I do. Finally, I believe this is what I’m supposed to be doing, and that what I’m doing will really help people in a big way. I read somewhere that that’s a characteristic of entrepreneurs, so I’ll take it.__________________

Thank you, Jason.

Recently, Geoff Livingston addressed how social media beefs up the resume. In my experience with hiring, the hardest part of reading someone's resume is figuring out what this person accomplished and the business results of those accomplishments - their story. I am still seeing piles of poorly written compilations of things a candidate has done, often in no particular logical order.

How about using social media learnings to clean up those resumes? If you've been looking for a job and wondering why you have not gotten calls, take the red pen and try an edit. You may get your resume noticed with tags, for example. What other elements of the world of social media can you utilize to refresh your resume and job search?

However, remember that the goal with your resume is sell me, not tell me.

If change were easy, we would have new marketing that is interesting, new topics at conferences and events, and plenty of new ideas and novel executions to feed on. We would also have little room for echo chambers. The truth is that change is easier to talk about than it is to do. Execution is vital, and willingness is crucial.

A few years ago, Fast Company was undergoing a lot of change. In many ways it and plenty of other publications still are. Change was one of the topics they chronicled. There was a whole series of articles and conversations dedicated to change. Yet, when change became necessary it was hard to implement. Remember Alan Deutschman's book Change or Die?

The client tells you that they'd like to see something very different. "We've been doing the same old thing for years," they tell you, "why don't you show us something else?" The trouble with that is often something else is quite vague. It means anywhere from "I'll know it when I see it," to "it does not look like something we'd do and say." Or, in the best of circumstances, the answer has been staring them in the face for years. They just need you, a third party, to tell them it will work. Be prepared to fight them on it, it will look and sound too easy. It's not. Execution matters.

All leadership comes down to this: changing people's behavior. Why is that so damn hard? Writes Deutschman. What happens when it is the leader who does not want to change? When he is hiding behind the idea of wanting to make a clean breast of things while he is paying lip service to giving the example. That is tricky territory. Change is not a prescription you give to others.

Choice gives us the illusion of change. I cannot recall when was the last time that an agency could propose only one recommendation. Richard Huntington at Adliterate puts it so well: we are spoiled by choice. Having lots of options only means delaying the moment of truth, when we will need to make a decision on direction. Would you much rather be exactly wrong or be surprising and interesting? Your choice.

Can you tell when someone just wants to extract a benefit from you and then move on? Well, so can your customers. Individuals who are interested in connecting are more focused on interests, and tend to stick around.

Companies and businesses that have a relationship-based approach tend to be in it for the long haul. They look at conversation very differently than just running a campaign or a program.

In fact, they see the whole conversation as an aggregate of lifestreams - the connection of the many entry points that the organization has throughout its online (and off line) presence. Customers can take advantage of the many touch points that exist to plug and play with the content and engage in a marketing conversation, if they so choose.

Lifestreaming

Last year, in a comprehensive post on lifestreaming, David Armano talked about the concept as fulfilling a basic human desire: that of wanting to make sense of our lives. We have a need to figure out the purpose of what we do and to drive home its meaning.

Companies have been monitoring the social media for an entryway, a space to come in and possibly be invited in our lives again. Mind you, some companies have made their products and services so compelling and meaningful in and of themselves that we have gone out of our way to have a relationship with them. We meet those businesses in the places where they are.

Where do the other businesses fit? Is their lifestream equivalent to the new business life cycle, a ticket to longevity?

In recent conversations with individuals who work on the corporate or client side like me, I learned that participation for the businesses they represent is not so much about the desire to control the conversation, as much the need to know what interests customers and what keeps them coming back. There is also a new need, that of finding where customers are hanging out - chances are it's not the usual channels.

Fragmentation Innovation

Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm, writes about integration innovation in Dealing with Darwin. In my experience, there is more innovation in fragmentation - the way we communicate on different channels, as an example, changes. That change brings new insight to the fore. Different individuals respond to different types of relational efforts, too. Niche players have the opportunity to go much deeper in an area, as another example.

Your time and that of your customers is also fragmented and it develops over a curve - creation, connection, consumption, collection, criticism and new creation. It's a cycle, if you can take yet another "c". The new sales cycle needs to map to this timing. From a social graph standpoint, there is also how these distinct phases in a customer's behavior map and transfer over to their connections.

In a discussion about engaging bloggers, John Pope of Dell replied to the question: "how do you know who matters, who you should answer?" with "everyone matters." They do because of the social graph, which is an elegant way to display and talk about what our network looks like - the graphical representation of the relationships between individuals (and things) in our lives.

Interests Feed Relationships

When we talk about multiple touch points in traditional marketing, we are talking about different expressions of one conversation - one that is hopefully regarded as useful by our customers. What would happen if we could have multiple conversations depending on how your customer sees the world? This would be the Holy Grail of personalization. Having a communication channel that is just yours and that of your customer's.

If you think it impractical, it has been up until now. First off, many of your customers are not online, yet. There are many other objections, not enough time, budgets, staff, and information. How about attention?

What if the lifestream we are talking about is that of your business? Put you and your business as the starting point from which all of the activities and channels sprout. In that light, what are the junctures at which you have the opportunity to make a connection with individuals? (I want to know what you think here.) Tomorrow we will talk about practical applications.

Given that interests feed relationships, and presence determines top of mind, how interested are you in making connections with your customers? They are not just lists in a data base - they are distinct individuals and the clusters that they influence.

The idea is to connect with your customers repeatedly over time, on their terms. The aggregated result for them is an experience of your business value proposition. For you it is a shift from passive observer to active participant.

Seriously, I know that many of us had a relationship with our newspaper. From the favorite journalists, to the editorial imprint, the layout, the sections, the political persuasion - down to the feel for the recyclable paper.

When the Wall Street Journal redesigned its print publication again (Jan. 2, 2007), the new layout was dissected by many. The narrower and more colorful format for the print edition was greeted with mixed feelings. David Pybas was the lead page one art director and lead designer for the new print edition of WSJ.

Print was to concentrate on analysis
stories and to leave the breaking news that used to make up almost half the
newspaper for the online edition, which publishes throughout the day. Bringing the front was business news - the most sensitive to a time cycle.

Recognizing that the
value of a breaking story diminishes as more publications
publish their own online versions within minutes, WSJ aligned its own online property more closely with the print version. I saw it as a good move. Others objected to the smaller size of what they fondly thought of as a more substantial publication just selling out and on the path to becoming irrelevant.

The news of yet more changes to the journal came as recently as April, 2008. Conde' Nast Portfolio.com sounded the alarm by saying that WSJ loads up on opinion, some of it liberal. It was interesting to discover that one of the revamped areas addresses the impact of digital technology on business.

If there is so much passion about the format of a print publication, we are quite adjusted to seeing online layouts change fairly frequently without batting an eyelid. Is this because we do not have a relationship with digital publications? It's not something you hold in your hands, where you turn the pages over coffee or breakfast - a mouse is a mouse is a mouse, whatever site you end up landing on and reading.

What I look for in a digital environment is good navigation and usability so I can find the news bits and occasionally do a deeper dive. I do not mind the stories that scroll over 5 pages or clicks. What I look for in a newsprint publication is also stories. Yet I hold that, turn the pages and fold it as I see fit. One could argue that today they are both quite portable, even as the print may be lighter and easier to discard (I am quite aware of the environmental impact and recycle mine).

The print souvenir is also a much stronger representation of the news organization's brand. It's the physical representation, what we call the hard copy. Online is soft. Is it too soft to invite to a relationship with the brand? What am I missing?

Want to increase your business success threefold? Tap into Groundswell. According to Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff a groundswell is:

A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.

Social technologies are enabling tools, so forget technology for a moment and ask yourself "Why do I want to be participating in the groundswell?" "What are my customers ready for?" and "What are my objectives?" In other words, do a POST and figure out the:

People - before you start, find out your customers' Social Technographics Profile. Go ahead and build one for your customers here. For example, are they online at all, are they inactive? This is a question we asked at a recent panel discussion on social media. If they are online, what is their level of participation? Are they creators, joiners, critics, collectors, or spectators?

Objectives - what are you trying to do? As you answer this question, bear in mind that with social technologies and dialogue, talking and energizing or otherwise tapping into the groundswell can and may lead to generating sales while the actions and dynamics that get you there are very different from a direct marketing or integrated marketing campaign. The missing link - listening - is built-in here.

Strategy - you're a good business person so you know that in order to know if you've gotten where you wanted to go, you need to figure out up front what changes and how you're going to measure the distance between destination and where you are. To map that course, define what change means to you - more engagement, better testimonials? Change in customer behavior will also mean change in how your organization or business serves your customer base. Address that, too.

Technology - now that you've done the heavy lifting, it's time to pick the tools - wikis, blogs, forums, social networks, etc.

How do you read the groundswell? By participation. Like all good things in life, this book will be useful to you in direct proportion to the amount of interaction you plan to have with its content. Decide before you pick it up:

Three things you are going to do as a direct result of learning from the how to's and stories. In fact, you might want to write down the case in which you tried and failed at social media. You might find answers or better questions in the book and research presented. For thoughtful questions and answers, check out the book's forum.

What is your own ROI for reading. In other words, measure your progress against your goals. Your start up costs are $19.77 for buying on Amazon and $X (this is the value you place yourself) for your time in reading, folding corners, underlining and writing notes. The ongoing costs are paying attention to the material, remaining aware of the information and how it relates to the conversations with your customers, technology learning curve, content production, periodical readjustment of your thinking. The value of the benefits to you is directly proportional to the quality of investment you make to give it a try.

How flexible and ready for change you're going to be. The hardest part of learning is forgetting what you already know. Put down your assumptions, get ready to engage both sides of your brain, and to be motivated. This decision will come in handy when you're going to share the material with your team.

My involvement in social media forever changed the way I think about and look at marketing - for the better. It has allowed me to be much closer to the market, where the action is. Imagine the three things you can do with your business to increase success.

Conversation won't change a detractor's mind - it may create the conditions necessary for the detractor to change his/her mind.

Here are some questions I'd like to extend to you here:

Why is doing nothing so bad? Might they just go away?

What is the cost of doing nothing to you? How can you move from monitoring a situation to a strategy that addressed the issue(s)?

How do you keep up with detractors?

Is the secret just to engage and acknowledge? Or is there more to it?

Can you integrate other teams an channels to address the concern? Ia m thinking about customer service, operations, engineering, etc.

Some Case Studies

Connie Reece shared a case study of how engagement turns critics into allies. What happened: the press releases issued by a provider of Web and mobile software for parents of newborns, Babble Soft, was picked up by an influential blogger who wrote a very negative review. Every Dot Connects, Connie's company, worked with Babble Soft on a strategy to engage the blogger in constructive conversation. The result was an apology by the blogger and continued interaction between the blogger and Babble Soft on social media. Download the case study here.

Shawn Morton encountered a situation when he was at CNET. He ran a community team for TechRepublic.com. They had an active community, but had a handful of popular users who could get very negative against us and other members. They came up with a
private "insiders" group where they asked 40-50 members to help them shape the community, preview upcoming features, etc. Those detractors
quickly became evangelists simply because they felt included and listened to.

You can also find out more about dealing with negative comments from Kami Huyse, and about the online disinhibition effect from Andrea Weckerle.

Talking With

We've talked about a case where a press statement missed the Target here a couple of months ago. The communication was designed to push a message instead of engaging the people who were talking with the organization. How can we improve on that score? How can we talk with instead of at? Do you think it goes across the board, or does it apply only in certain situations?

The advice is to pick a unique name, I came up with Conversation Agent - that was still when the term conversation had not tipped, and I knew it would. Thank you mom and dad for giving me a pretty rare name, it will come in handy. Conversation Agent is an accurate expression of my personal brand vs. an aspirational concept. It came after years of work with organizations and community filling that role.

This is who I am. It will evolve thanks to the connections and interaction. I welcome that evolution.

They say that writing short posts is much better and gets you more readers and comments. I know it's easier on the eyes and time for sure. Although I have gotten better at editing my content down, I am still writing long. My posts also tend to be more like articles, with subheads and development. That happens when I am thinking deeper as I spend time with an idea. It also happens as I connect different ideas. Yes, they do take time to write - 2-4 hours, depending on the research involved.

This has been a prequel to other projects. The time has come to recalibrate what I write here.

The third piece of advice I usually do not follow is thinking that the value of content I share depends on the number of comments I receive on that post. That's because on more than one occasion I presented ideas that were slightly or much ahead or from a Euro-global angle. There is also plenty of evidence that my posts grow over time - they are directional and at a slow release even for me. Many a time I've reread an old post and looked at the content from a fresh angle.

Thank you for risking conversations, exchanges here and elsewhere, incomplete thoughts, and amusement. Thank you for the contribution, the likable ways *you* have that are yours alone. Thank you for allowing me to glimpse into your world and for taking part in mine. Thank you for reading.

This is the prepared left brain part of our conversation at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum yesterday. I created an guide you can download here as a way to take some resources back to the office and share with your team.

Whether you were in Boston or not, we can extend the conversation here. If you were in Boston, you would have also gotten the right brain side of my presentation - with all the accompanying Italian-style body language, visuals, and marvelous participation from the audience.

______________

About Your Web Site

Web users are becoming more harried. The annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online. They are like modern shoppers - they want to go in the store and get out holding what they were looking for in the minimum time required.

The good news is that today 75% of the people achieve that goal compared to 60% in 1999. There are many reasons for this increase:

better design and usability;

more Web savvy people:

see what they are looking for faster;

know what to look for (which also makes people less tolerant of searching for what they cannot find).

Summarizing:

be engaging using the benefit to the visitor vs. your feature;

be succinct by getting to the point up front;

make it easy to want to find out more through built-in interaction.

Bottom line = less fluff, more substance.

1. Who are you talking with?

To drive traffic to your Web site, you first need to know who you'd want to attract. The first thing you need to decide is with whom would you like to talk? Who is your ideal readership?

Then right after that you will need to decide what you want them to do. That is what your home page should help you with - showing your readers and potential buyers where the banana is (this is a Seth Godin expression). That means what is it you want them to do.

It starts with who, then what.

Who do you want to engage?

What do you want them to do?

Then ask: why?

2. Tell them something they didn't know

In many business models, especially for companies that have been around a while, but also in younger firms, there is this belief that your ideas are your currency.

The psychology of free is very powerful. Give something away for free, and it has the potential to go viral. The execution still matters, as long as it's not entirely about you. It's about what all that brain power you have, deployed, can help your customers solve a problem.

Why should they be reading? Tell them something they did not know, let your customers look smart in front of their bosses and they will in turn tell everyone what they learned using your tools.

3 Give them something to talk about

With free as the center of today's attention economy, the focus shifts to what is useful to your customers, what they value, truly. They in turn will let you see who they share what they learned from you with. Track it using Google Alerts with keywords to find out what people are saying about your company.

Blogs, message boards, even emails can spread ideas faster than we ever hope to. The trick is to be where the conversation is. And to do that, you've got to create something they will talk about.

Give your customers tools that will help do their jobs better and you gain two scarce currencies - attention and reputation, plus you get to see what works and sticks and what doesn't, then adjust, repeat.

4. Content = nourishment = marketing that works

Content matters. Let's make that count. We said give it away for free, focus it on helping them, use the appropriate human voice and tone. Content marketing is the only marketing left that really works - online and off line. When you decide who you are talking with, who you are trying to attract, you write that content so that it addresses their specific questions, concerns, issues, what they are seeking to learn.

Then you earn the right to invite action at every step of the way.

An example from our site:

You're certain business continuity is a strategic asset making operations and revenue possible.

Are you just as certain that your disaster recovery capabilities are keeping pace with the demands for higher levels of information availability?

Business continuity is a strategic imperative and a competitive advantage in an environment where you must plan for the unexpected, maintain operations, and meet regulatory demands. Just think of the daily volume of emails, transactions, and archived data that have to be secured and readily available. And all of this against shrinking recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTO and RPO).

5. Affirm their product choice

People want to feel they've made the right decision about what they consume. The most powerful way to affirm this is by showing that others have made the same choice. Put customer feedback, names, and activity where they can be easily noticed.

There is another aspect of the conversation that you can borrow from social media - and that is to use feedback to show you are listening. Make it personal, it is.

6. How are you different?

Tell your story. Today writing with a human voice and letting the personality of a company come across are considered the price of entry in consideration. Who wants to dig through a site filled with impersonal expressions like: "we are the leading company that does X," "our cutting-edge technology is unique," and so on?

Tell me exactly why and how you are different. What is your brand ownership strategy? Finding out what your personality is means figuring out how you are different. As you go through that exercise, remember that your customer does not hold all of the things you hold in your head about your company - and chances are, he/she does not care.

You will need to do the heavy lifting with your words, your tone and how they wrap around her/his problem. Then go head and write with a voice unique to your brand.

An example from our Web site:

The Value of Information Availability

Having information always available isn't just an IT issue anymore—it's a business issue. It's about remaining productive, viable, and competitive. It's about customers, business partners, and employees at every level. It's about anticipating threats and maintaining uptime. It's about the readiness to exploit opportunities and grow. That's the value of Information Availability.

7. Does your site make you heavy?

According to Web site optimization, the size of the average web site page has more than tripled since 2003. During the same five-year period, the number of objectsin the average web page (texts, images, ads, audio, video, applets, etc) nearly doubled from 25.7 to 49.9 objects per page on average, with top sites including generally more objects. As broadband becomes more widespread, web designers have created more elaborate designs, and Web2.0 technologies such as AJAX certainly contribute to the increase in the number of objects per page. Longer term statistics show that since 1995 the size of the average web page has increased by 22 times, and the number of objects per page has grown by 21.7 times.

Bottom line: stay light.

8. Is that video adding value?

This is not to say that animation and dynamic elements like flash are not welcome, or useful. Yet, before adding all those bells and whistles, you should ask yourself if they will be a distraction (and in some cases an annoyance) or if they truly add value.

Can you provide value beyond the sales pitch?

Some ideas on adding value:

editing that testimonial down to the story and the sound bites visitors can share (distill it down for them);

providing a write up, a schematic, an eBook that can be customized and used (help them sell);

providing a PowerPoint presentation with ROI models for your type of service that can be used by your customers and prospects to build his/her case on buying the service;

updating your content frequently. A good rule of thumb is 10-15% per month.

9. Use the news area as a hub to invite inquiry

What we have done in the past eight months has been to consolidate all of our company's media activities in the news and events area of our Web site. When we have major stories, podcasts, and bylines published in the trade press, we have taken the time to summarize the payout and included that on our site with the link to the original story.

To highlight our expertise in and passion for technology, instead of writing "we are experts" all over the site, we've created biographies for our speakers that detail very specifically what they know.

By virtue of using the industry terminology, that which maps to current conversations in the marketplace, we have increased the number of visitors from search - by more than 100% over the same period last year. That, in a competitive space like technology services, is nothing to sneeze about.

Organic search engine optimization (SEO) is allowing us to use the news areas as a hub to invite further inquiry. You can also use the news area to help your customers come back for the next compelling story.

10. Help them to come back with RSS and newsletter sign ups

This is something you can do once you have a reservoir of content you feel confident you will be able to stream. Individuals who sign up though an RSS reader, will expect to see new content from you regularly. Whether you decide to make refreshes weekly, monthly, or every two days, it's a good idea to set expectations up front and keep pace with them.

Creating a custom newsletter works very well in helping your readers stay up to date. The benefit for you is that you collect email addresses, but with one caveat - make it explicit how you are going to use that address. And do not deviate from your promises about that.

Newsletters can be tailored to different audiences. For example, you could gear one version to the needs of small businesses, just like MarketingProfs does, while customizing one for enterprises to address their needs.

In addition to helping people sign up for news items, help them email, bookmark, and forward your content by integrating social media elements with your site.

No matter what you decide to do, remember that communication takes a while to open a two-way channel, stay with it.

10A. Appearances matter

No site can be "sticky" if it's too cluttered to scan. At the same time, a site will not stick if it is merely a page of bulleted lists. Be smart about your design elements. Use lots of whitespace, muted (but modern) color combinations, and readable fonts.

Fine tune your content, links, and labels constantly. Use the Web site metrics as a way to monitor which pages and areas receive higher traffic, retire or rewrite those that don't.

The future

The Web presence of the future may be organized completely in thirds - part editorial, part community, and part marketing weaved throughout the site; without needing to separate them in a blog, a forum, a customer idea space, and the corporate brochure-ware. This is how we do business - through relationships and connections.

1/3 editorial impact - make the content efficient while still effective; say enough and not too much, talk about the customer and what they think (or worry) about and offer paths forward to action

1/3 community building - what we in social media have come to refer to as conversation, engagement, creating the connection; before it does that, it needs to be a space where someone knows our name (outside of Cheers)

1/3 marketing principles - the value-based bread and butter of why we buy and how we sell; I could call this positioning, except for there is a lot more to it than that

The following is a post I wrote for Marketing 2.0. [The Juggler is at about minute 5:30 of this 7:36 minute video]____________

The other week, I attended KOOZA, an experience in intense storytelling by Cirque du Soleil. It was the shortest two and half hours I ever spent - that’s because I invested them. My return was a full immersion in the passion and joy of the actors and athletes who shared the product of their love for the art of movement and skill.
Plus one insight.

The Juggler

Who could not identify with someone handling multiple items at the same time? Let’s do five, then seven, how about nine? The speed and agility were truly impressive, I think I did not hear a blink in the tent. Yet, the most impressive part of the performance was the smile on his lips.

He was not acting as the juggler, he *was* the juggler. An expression of radiance and an act of love. The rapid-fire movements only added charm and elegance to his performance. There were no boring repetitions, just grace and enchantment.

Can you?

Can you look at your products and services in the every day routine with the same kind of attention?

Can you deploy the same kind of concentration while under pressure to deliver?

Can you display the same level of passion about what you do?

Then you are a creator - of product, price, place, promotion; of experience.

There is Love in Creation

In marketing 2.0 experience is key. When you open the door to conversation, what comes through is your stance, the smile on your lips, the belief in your mind, the love in your heart. That is the passion that triggers participation, inspires empowerment and leads to
purpose, the four Ps of new marketing.

How do you learn to love the stuff you market? In the same way you learn to embrace the marketplace for the stuff you’ve got: by letting your customers be part of the action. They call it 2.0 for a reason - you are the second, they are the first.

Scott Karp over at Publishing 2.0 has an interesting discussion going about the unnecessary frustration users experience at the sites of main stream media publications. In a previous post, Scott attributes the problem to the fact that stories are written with the print mentality even for the online version.

That is probably one of the reasons why many new media networks are starting to gain ground over online Websites of main stream media. They are designed for online user experience. Yet, quality news reporting is the reason why the online versions of newspapers still have a healthy readership.

The conversation inspired me to think about another metric that is quite important - both off line and online - that of circulation. A while back, I made myself a note that asked: what is your circulation?

Daily print publications are now counting their circulation with the added online readership. The news is that even doing it that way shows a decline, because online readers are not replacing off line subscribers one for one.

Media planners are also finding the numbers for online circulation troublesome. According to a report in Circulation Magazine, they are turning to third parties as there is still a lack of standardized verification for digital media. We ought to be able to have a searchable online tool to figure that all out.

For online circulation only, we use
comScore (probably the largest, and the one most agencies use); Quantcast (the ultra-hot up-and-comer); and Compete.

In this light, user experience takes on a whole new meaning. News items are still important and relevant, as is great content. However, the way a story spreads is much more in the hands of those who think it adds value. Digg is one such service that helps spread news.

Jess (in the comments to Scott's post) shares the link to the new AP study on news consumption and usability. The study helped solidify AP's mission for the digital marketplace:

Create content that will satisfy a full range of consumers’ news needs and then build the links that will connect people to the relevant news they seek.

They also concluded that the fragmentation of the news channels and delivery models, as well as the user experience are by and large disappointing. The cultural anthropologist in you will love this report. Interestingly, Philadelphia was selected among the cities where Context-Based Research Group recruited individuals for the study.

It will not be shocking to you that today's faster delivery platforms have created a quick delivery and quick consumption model. New generations seldom dig deeper - yet they crave more information. Frankly, I have been quite anesthetized by the US news cycle that beats news into the ground and pulverizes it. The second finding addresses news fatigue and balance.

With the intent of creating social currency, new media has exploded the horizontal news - many blogs and sites reporting on the same story. Yet, even as there are different angles and opinions in the reporting, there is rarely any depth. That is what we still crave for. Which is excellent news, if you pardon my pun, for traditional news organizations that are trying to make a mark online.

From the study, AP came up with a new model that would have then shift from container to entry points. As you can see in this image, we now have a universe of stories made up of different spheres, each ranging in size and scope – and consumers interacting with the story from different entry points and platforms.

The editors' role is then one of "information officers" - those who must find ways to connect a story's entry points for users, and providing them more information than they could find by searching or scrolling.

Because of our capability of sharing news with each other, depth via links and repackaging take a whole new dimension. With information available any time, any place, the revenue model will need to be where we connect content, advertising and readership/listenership in a personalized way and large scale at the same time.

All this develops and loses shape while it takes different forms. What seems to be true is that online, user experience equals circulation.